Students blast ASEAN meeting

Students blast ASEAN meeting

BANGKOK (AFP): A Myanmarese student group yesterday blasted Thailand's invitation to Myanmar to attend the ASEAN foreign ministers meeting here next week, but said it would not do anything violent to disrupt the conference.

Rumors that the dissidents would launch bombings or other terrorists attacks during the July 22-27 conference "are completely false," the All Burma Students' Democratic Front (ABSDF) said in a statement.

It said two senior ABSDF members stopped by Thai soldiers near the border recently were interrogated twice and "coerced" into confessing to "an alleged 'bomb blast attack' at the forthcoming ASEAN meeting."

This may have been an attempt to find a scapegoat for anything that goes wrong at the meeting or to discredit the ABSDF in the eyes of the people and the ASEAN governments, it said.